Like Orion, a Daedaluscraft would have to be rather large. The other strategy is magnetic confinement fusion (MCF), and similar to ICF, designs exist for adapting MCF to space propulsion. Named for the inventor from Greek mythology who built wings to escape the island of Crete, the design was based on projected development of inertial confinement fusion (ICF), one of two main strategies for generating nuclear fusion energy on Earth. A Cleaner Systemīut what about a less explosive, cleaner propulsion system that could achieve the same end? The British Interplanetary Society took on this goal in the 1970s with Project Daedalus. Suffice it to say it does not seem likely that we’ll every build a nuclear pulse ship, but it’s something that we already have the technology to build. But back when Orion was being funded, amazingly, the plan was to use the nuclear pulse engine even for launching the vessel, in one massive piece, from the surface of Earth. In his epic TV series Cosmos, Carl Sagan noted such an engine would be an excellent way to dispose of humanity’s nuclear bombs, but that it would have to be activated far from Earth. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which forbade nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which forbade nuclear explosive devices in space, effectively ended Orion. The researchers calculated the ship to could reach five percent the speed of light (0.05 c), resulting in roughly a 90-year travel time to Alpha Centauri. They will also be able to read the chemical composition of planetary atmospheres.Īn Orion propulsion schematic. Very soon, these questions will be answered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that NASA will be launching into space in 2018, and by other instruments that will follow, instruments capable of more than merely detecting a planet’s presence. What we really want to know is whether planets exist further out from the two main stars, or whether their much smaller, dimmer companion star, Proxima Centauri, located just 4.24 light years from Earth, has planets of its own. Three years later, astronomers were unable to find that same planet, but if it exists it would be too hot for life anyway. In 2012, a planet was identified orbiting closely around Alpha Centauri B, one of three stars comprising the Alpha Centauri system. Located roughly 4.37 light years away, Alpha Centauri is the Sun’s closest neighbor thus science fiction, including Star Trek, has envisioned it as humanity’s first interstellar destination. But it also will depend on the distance to nearest Earth-like exoplanet. I believe the best bet for supra-luminal travel is a technology similar to what the main deflector does in Star Trek, at warp speeds it uses some unknown (to me anyway) physics to deflect anything in the ships path.Certainly, feasibility of such missions will depend on geopolitical-economic factors. Unfortunately at light speed such technology wouldn't be sufficient to protect against impacts at light speed. They actually developed a form of armor to absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy of these tiny fragments traveling at thousands of kilometers an hour. A while back I watched a documentary on the International Space Station, it has minor collisions with tiny fragments fairly regularly. The bigger danger is actually stuff that's too small to detect. That's a lot of time to change course to avoid planets, stars etc. Doesn't seem that long does it? Well Mars is our next closest neighbor, that trip takes light between 13 and 24 minutes (depending on relative orbital positions). Light travels at 1,079,000,000 km/hour, at that speed it takes light about 1 second to travel from the Earth to the moon.
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